Kissinger to Attend Thatcher’s Funeral as Obama Stays Away

By Kitty Donaldson -
Apr 16, 2013

Former U.S. Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger will attend the funeral of Margaret Thatcher
tomorrow as President Obama said he will stay away.

Former secretaries of state George Shultz and James A. Baker III, who both served under Republican President Ronald Reagan, will lead the U.S. delegation sent by Obama, the White
House said in a statement. Kissinger’s attendance was announced
by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s office in London today.

Reagan was Thatcher’s closest Cold-War ally during her term
in office between 1979 and 1990. Republican former Vice
President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne will attend, Cameron’s
office said.

Nobel Prize-winner Kissinger orchestrated the opening of
relationships with Communist China in the 1970s. Thatcher
strengthened ties with another branch of Communism in former
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, 82, a man she said she
“could do business with.” Gorbachev will not attend because of
ill health.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not be
attending, spokesman Nick Merrill said in an e-mail today.

Asked if Cameron thinks the U.S. had snubbed the U.K., the
prime minister’s spokesman, Jean-Christophe Gray, said
“absolutely not.”

“The seniority of the dignitaries in the U.S. delegation
that includes two former secretaries of state with whom Lady
Thatcher worked with very closely herself, is testament to her
global stature,” he said.

Falklands Tension

Argentina’s ambassador to the U.K., Alicia Castro, has
declined an invitation to attend, Gray said. Argentine President
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was not invited.

The move underlines the continuing tension over the
Falkland Islands, which Kirchner has pressed Britain to give up
and which Argentina invaded in 1982. More than 700 troops from
U.K. units that fought in the Falklands War will line the route
of the funeral procession, giving the event a martial feel.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spain’s prime minister,
Mariano Rajoy, are sending their foreign ministers, Guido Westerwelle and Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, to the service in
London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, their governments said. Merkel
signed a book of condolence for Thatcher at the British Embassy
in Berlin April 11, describing her as “one of the great
political figures of the 20th century.”

Former justice minister Elisabeth Guigou will represent
France, which currently has a socialist administration.

Canada’s Stephen Harper, Mario Monti of Italy and Polish
Prime Minister Donald Tusk are among the most prominent guests
whose attendance has been confirmed so far.

Thatcher-era German Chancellor Helmut Kohl declined an
invitation to attend the funeral because the trip would be too
strenuous, his spokeswoman, Marion Scheller, said by phone
today. Kohl, 83, is wheelchair-bound.

More than 2,000 invitations have been sent out for the
funeral, the biggest for a political leader in Britain since
that of Winston Churchill in 1965.